The Life of a Story in Progress XV: Sound Rage

Why is it that we can we shut our eyes but not our ears? I think it would be great to be able to turn the volume down or mute sound altogether. If this were possible, I don’t think I’d leave the sound automatically on all the time. Or perhaps I’d leave it on very low. I know I’d turn it off completely under certain conditions. After all, if I am not speaking with someone or listening to music, why do I need to listen to extraneous noise?

Since I don’t know of any animals that can stop hearing at will, I suspect there’s some kind of survival aspect to always-on hearing. I get it, if you’re prey for some other larger or capable predator, it’s best to have the earliest warning possible. That unexpected snap of a small branch coming from inside the nearby thicket could be enough of an advance alert to avoid becoming dinner.

But now there aren’t too many predators lurking about silently waiting to get close enough to pounce upon us. I suppose a myriad of taxis and other vehicles on city streets simulate some aspect of the pry/predator scenario, but it would still be possible to safely navigate the city without hearing.

It would seem that evolution takes a very, very long time to effect big changes. Unfortunately, we cannot close our hearing any more than we can stop from developing wisdom teeth and appendixes. Of course, most people probably don’t think of the inability to turn off hearing as an unnecessary carry-over from more primitive times due to evolution’s slow moving feet. But then, not everyone has the same tolerance for the constant bombardment of noise that continuously assails our eardrums.

Personally, I cannot think straight when I’m in a noisy environment. Incidentally, sudden unexpected sounds that startle me also cause me to see that sound. I see it as a flash of white. And no, I’m not nuts; this is a real phenomenon and it even has a name: synesthesia. But let’s get back to the superfluous assault of vibrations hitting our eardrums.

I hear too much. Or perhaps, I’m unable to filter out the portions of what I have the ability to hear but have no need to comprehend. Rattling, tapping, scraping, squeaking, ticking and/or crackling noises, even very low ones, are maddening to me. It turns out, this isn’t something that merely annoys me for no good reason or is just a quirk of my personality. This is an actual disorder (like I needed another one) that can be found in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and it too has a name: misophonia, AKA “hatred of noise.” OMG.

Misophonia causes one to have a negative emotional reaction to a particular sound, one that elicits an automatic physiological flight response. Yes, folks…if you chew with your mouth open I may run screaming from the room. The textbooks say that the disorder “disrupts daily living and can have a significant impact on social interactions.” Tell me about it.

I can get angry, indeed very much so, by common everyday sounds such as other people eating, breathing, sniffling, talking, sneezing, yawning, snoring or coughing. The sounds people make seem to be worse for me to bear than those sounds not caused by people or other living things, although the sound of a crackling water bottle in the car’s cup holder will always get a quick correction from me.

How do I feel about this? I feel awful. When an offending noise is made by another person, especially when they’re doing something completely normal and possibly essential for life (like breathing!), I cannot tell them that I’m going bonkers inside. I wish I could. They might not like to hear it or understand why the hell I’d even take notice that they sneezed three times in a row, but unfortunately, this is something I can’t control. Again, this isn’t something I can learn to get used to or should have grown out of by now. This is real.

Many people are repelled by the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard or the sound of a knife scraping across a ceramic plate. Those sounds can be very annoying and the reaction people have to those sounds gives some small indication of the reaction I have to a much wider array of noises.

However, no one is really put-off by a request to stop running their fingers down a chalkboard. In fact, they may laugh at your reaction knowing that the sound they’re making bothers most people. So asking someone to stop scraping their fingernails across a chalkboard is most likely what the person wants you to do, it lets them know they got to you (hopefully in a playful way). So you don’t really run much of a risk of them being annoyed or angry with you. But if you tell someone (abruptly and not so very subtly) to stop chewing with their mouth open or making some other harmless and unimportant sound, they may just decide you’re a jerk.

It’s not just people that make the problematic noises.

I recently moved to a new house. When I first visited the property and after I started living there, I was very aware of the noises in the environment. I made note of a few things like the sound of a dog barking in the distance, the sound of someone running a lawn mower or other machine, and the sound of some heavy equipment being used a few houses away.

The comments I got back from other people suggested that they thought I was being too sensitive to what they considered to be normal noise levels and normal neighborhood sounds. It also felt as though they might have been annoyed with me for even noticing the sounds of the environment. There may have been some degree of “you can’t always get what you want” being put forth. And that would be true, you really can’t always get what you want… but at times like this, I sometimes feel that people believe I am perpetuating a game, a game in which I enjoy being the person who is too sensitive to sounds. I may also get the impression that they think I am overacting on purpose. This is not the case. Trust me, nobody would choose to be misophonic. 

Below are some links that deal with misophonia and explain it in terms as it relates to people in general.

I didn’t really know who Kelly Ripa was, but I watched an ABC News video in which she explained her experience with misophonia and I thought she did a great job explaining it to the interviewer. The entire piece was excellent but I couldn’t watch it past the part where the guy has to leave the room when his friend deliberately triggers his sensitivity to certain sounds. It made me sad, I related to his reaction all too well.

I had absolutely no idea that other people experienced this. 

And although it's strangely comforting to know that they do, it validates that there’s some further errant behavior going on in my brain. 

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/05/18/safer-for-misophonics-2020s-misophonia-coverage/

http://misophonia.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misophonia